Chapter Text
A young man, no older than twenty-five, left his mate’s house at eleven at night and was found dead by a college kid at eleven-thirty, missing most of his teeth and his shoes.
Lestrade called Sherlock in, and he showed up, sans John Watson, looking so incredibly, insultingly bored that Lestrade gestured to the body hanging halfway out the window and said to the detective, “I sure hope we’re not inconveniencing you, Sherlock.”
The detective rolled his eyes, and Lestrade felt the tiny urge to stomp his feet like a toddler. He suppressed it.
Sherlock squatted down next to the body and didn’t even pull out his magnifier, he just glanced at the body for about thirty seconds and then stood. He straightened his jacket, looked to Lestrade, and then his phone rang.
He pressed his lips together, looking unimpressed at something, and slipped it out of his pocket, answering and putting it to his ear.
Lestrade was close enough to catch a word or two of the other end, but not much. ‘Is this Sherlock Holmes?’ the other line said.
“Yes,” Sherlock snapped, sounding impatient, yet still looking thoroughly bored, and then he went very still. “Repeat yourself,” He snapped again, biting and hot, and Lestrade felt a brief pang of pity for whoever it was on the other line. “Not possible, there's no way, I'm not-” He went silent again as the other person spoke, and Lestrade watched his eyebrows slam down like stones.
Sherlock suddenly bolted, tearing through the crime scene tape and waving frantically for a cab like he was trying to fling his own arm off.
“Oi, Sherlock-!” Lestrade looked from the body to Sherlock and back again, and Donovan quirked her lips at him.
“Oh, just leave him,” She said.
Lestrade looked back as Sherlock jumped into a cab like a gangly black spider, and then he gave Donovan a very helpless look.
She pursed her lips at him. “Ugh, just go,” She grunted, kneading the bridge of her nose. “Seriously, you act like you're his maid or something.”
Lestrade sprinted after Sherlock, but the cab was turning the corner, and so he flagged down another one- lucky him, getting two in a row-stabbed a finger at Sherlock's cab, and told the cabbie to follow him.
Twice, Lestrade tried to call Sherlock, but he didn't answer. From the way Sherlock's cab was swerving and speeding, he had to guess that the detective was using some “gentle persuasion” on the poor cabbie.
The fare on the cab continued to climb, and Lestrade checked his wallet. Shit.
The cabbie seemed to notice his expression, because he sent him a glance in the mirror, eyes narrowed. “You sure you can pay for this, mate?”
Lestrade flashed his badge over the seat, and the cabbie just grunted with distaste.
“Scotland Yard, police business. Follow that cab,” Lestrade said, almost feeling guilty for stretching the truth a bit, but that guilt disappeared when the cabbie screeched to a halt in front of Bart’s, to be replaced by annoyance.
Lestrade grabbed a bill from his wallet- he didn't care to see which one- and handed it to the cabbie before leaving the car to go chew out Sherlock. There was probably some new corpse he wanted to beat the living-, well, beat the daylights out of- and Lestrade had just left a crime scene because of him. God, he cared too much.
“Sherlock!” He shouted at the detective as he ran for the front door. No answer, he didn't even slow down. “ Sherlock!” He tried again, and when he still didn't reply, Lestrade begrudgingly ran after him. He wasn't just going to let this go; Sherlock did this too often. Would it really have taken so long to explain where he was going? It wasn't like-
“Sir, what-”
“John Watson, I'm here to see John Watson are you thick or something? Where is he, what room, tell me where he is!”
Oh, no.
Sherlock was standing in front of a very intimidated nurse, her hands kind of crushed together in front of her stomach. She was barely holding her composure, and Lestrade really didn't blame her. Sherlock was furious and about to explode, and Lestrade stepped in.
“Sherlock, please, what is going-”
Then Sherlock turned his fury onto Lestrade. “Oh, you idiot you know what's happening don't you of course you do you heard what I said, you know he's here she won't tell me where he is-” His voice was dangerous and panicky and Lestrade was worried, but not overly surprised. John was in the hospital, so Sherlock was losing his shit.
“Sir, please, sir!" The nurse shouted, and Sherlock closed his mouth and whipped his head around to face her. “Thank you! I can't help you if I don't know who you are! Give me your name and I'll tell you where the person is you'd like to see,” She said, smoothing out her shirt.
Sherlock snapped out his name, and she nodded and typed it into the computer in front of her. She stared at the screen for a good few seconds. “You’re John Watson’s emergency contact?” She asked, and Lestrade felt a little spark of surprise. John Watson’s emergency contact.
“Yes yes of course, where is he?” Sherlock said, and the nurse gave him a forced smile.
“Room 324,” She informed him, and Sherlock was gone in a flash. Lestrade followed on his heels, feeling ridiculous, and they bypassed the elevator and sprinted up the stairs instead, Sherlock taking the steps three at a time.
“Good God, man, slow down,” Lestrade said, but he wasn't entirely sure that Sherlock even heard him.
Sherlock threw himself against the crash bar and tumbled into the hallway and skidded around the corner like a dying racehorse.
Sherlock reached Room 324 and he stopped right in front of it, frozen in place. His hand was even stretched out for the doorknob, but he looked stricken, and as Lestrade walked up he seemed to snap out of it, and finally he opened the door.
The room was silent save for the beeps of machinery. It smelled like chemicals and linens, and in the bed lay John Watson, engulfed in tubes and tape and looking quite small.
Sherlock’s eyes were huge, and his hands were outstretched and his fingers spread wide. He looked entirely out of his depth. He took a step towards the bed.
“John,” He said, and almost like he thought it was too loud, he tried again, but whispered this time. “ John.”
The army doctor did not move.
Sherlock looked at Lestrade with his huge eyes, as if he was saying I don't know what to do.
Neither did Lestrade.
And then the nurse on the other side of the room that neither of them had noticed spoke up. “He's in a coma, sir,” She said, and Sherlock managed to stand up straight and put his arms down to his sides, but his eyes remained saucers. “He-”
“Tell me,” Sherlock demanded, and the nurse gave a sad frown, like she knew how this went. “What happened, I want every detail, now, don't sugarcoat anything, I want the facts.”
“Well, sir, Mr. Watson was struck by a vehicle this morning-”
“Where?” Sherlock demanded again, but Lestrade was staring at John and feeling a bit sick, looking at the bandage wound around his skull.
“I don't have that information,” She replied calmly. “Mr. Watson was struck by a vehicle in a hit and run and is suffering from four broken ribs, a punctured lung, hairline fractures on his left arm and right leg, and a severe concussion. He's in a coma, sir.”
Sherlock looked angry and terrified at once, and vengeful and disgusted and electrified. He turned away from Lestrade and the nurse and wiped his gloved hand down his face, staring at John with those huge eyes.
The nurse quietly left the room, and Sherlock seemed to forget that Lestrade was there. He moved forward and solemnly pushed a plastic chair up next to the bed and sat down in it, hunched over with his elbows in his lap. “John,” He said, and Lestrade realized that Sherlock really didn't know he was there, and he looked around to find a way to escape before anything too private happened. “John, can you hear me? It's said that some people can hear in comas. John, can you hear me? John, can you...?” He sounded scared, and still John didn't move. Of course he didn't move.
Lestrade went for the door.
Sherlock bit his knuckle through the glove and pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
“Yes, yes, please let's dispense with the pleasantries, brother, I- you need to- you have to-” Sherlock ground his teeth together and ground his teeth. “I need your help,” He spat the word like it was a cuss, his face pinched and furious. Lestrade was shuffling towards the door. “Of course you saw, I'm not stupid, but I need a name! Who was the driver? ”
Lestrade was at the door.
Sherlock rocketed up from his chair and shouted into his phone. “Who was the bloody driver, Mycroft?” He remained still for a moment, and finally growled and hung up. Sherlock stared at the ground, flexed his hands, and then stormed out of the room, shoving roughly past Lestrade on his way through the door. Lestrade sent one last glance back at John, still lying in the bed, and went after him.
Sherlock took the stairs again, but Lestrade wasn't having it. He took the lift down, fiddling impatiently with the edge of his coat as he waited, and when he left the building he was just in time to see Sherlock wave down a cab, flash what was probably Lestrade’s badge at the cabbie, and drive off.
Lestrade fished around in his pocket, came up empty, and rubbed his temples in frustration.
One visit to a cashpoint and an expensive cab trip later, Lestrade was back at the crime scene. Donovan looked odd, like she was concerned and trying her hardest not to look it. “We heard on the scanner,” She said when he got close. “That’s why he left, innit? The hit and run?”
Lestrade nodded, and Donovan looked away, eyes narrowed and fingers drumming on her arms. “Did you see him, though?” She said, sort of offhandedly. “He’s fine, right?”
“Not really,” Lestrade replied, and he saw her face tighten a little, but she didn’t say anything. “He’s in a coma.”
Donovan drummed her fingers again, harder and more deliberate, and then she tossed her hair over her shoulder and jerked her chin at the crime scene. “We’re wrapping up, sending the body for autopsy. What did he have to say?” Lestrade assumed that ‘he’ was supposed to be Sherlock. He’d known Donovan since she’d first joined the force, a feisty, loyal, abrasive woman who sometimes directed her fire at the wrong people. He had a lot of respect for Sally, most of the time, and he had noticed how she rarely used the nickname ‘Freak’ anymore, but she still didn’t call Sherlock by his name all that much either. Which meant that she didn’t despise him quite as much, but she also didn’t like him.
Hey, progress was progress.
“Sherlock ran off before I could get anything out of him,” Lestrade explained, and Donovan huffed through her nose.
“I don’t suppose he’s coming back, then?”
Lestrade shook his head. “Doubt it. Didn’t really seem to want to be here in the first place.”
“I thought so.” She looked like she was fighting internally, her fingers pressing against her arms again. “We’ve got this handled, why don’t you- I mean, if you have something you need to take care of-” She stopped, like she was begging him to cut her off, and he obliged.
“I know, I know. I’ll try not to take too long,” He said, and took out his phone, ready to dial Sherlock’s number, but there was a single text from the detective: PDK 2S -SH , it read. A plate number. He wanted Lestrade to run a plate number.
Where are you? He replied, and as Lestrade called the Yard, he wondered at exactly what point he had decided to listen to what Sherlock told him to do.
He got some desk worker to run the plate, and had just scribbled the information on the notepad balanced on his thigh when he received another text. Run the plate -SH
George F. Carlton. Why?, Lestrade sent back, and seconds later he received a reply.
Address, Lestrade -SH , and then, You know why -SH
Lestrade hesitated, very briefly. There was no question about what Sherlock intended to do, but then he thought about John Watson, pale and bruised in that hospital bed covered in bandages and plaster casts, and he typed in the address.
14 Grey Street, He sent, and then he got into his squad car and glanced at Donovan, who was standing with one hand on her hip and directing various officers. He felt proud of her, about how far she’d come, and finally he pulled out of the alleyway and made his way to Grey Street, admittedly a little slower than he should have (he didn’t put his sirens on, either).
Lestrade gripped the steering wheel and rubbed his forehead. How far had he come? Sherlock was certainly about to do something almost definitely against the law, and Lestrade knew, and wasn’t trying all that much to stop him.
Again, he thought of the steadfast army doctor, and sort of let that nagging feeling of guilt float away.
The drive to Grey Street was fairly long, and along the way Lestrade had lots of time to let everything sink in. John Watson was a tough man, loyal and intelligent and surprisingly unassuming, and Lestrade was incredibly thankful of him. He’d really changed Sherlock for the better, and Lestrade hated to think what Sherlock would be like without him.
14 Grey Street was a seedy building wedged between a butcher’s shop that looked riddled with health code violations and a pawnbroker with mismatched windows. A dark blue sedan without any license plates was haphazardly parked on the side of the road, and the Detective Inspector stopped and examined the car. Most of the exterior was splattered with mud and dust and the ghost of raindrops, and yet the front bumper was shining in the setting sun, glossy enough that he could almost see his reflection in it. There was a jagged scratch right below the grill.
Lestrade, despite Sherlock’s insistence to the contrary, was not an idiot. He knew what this meant.
The door was unlocked, and Lestrade opened it just a bit and listened.
From the top floor drifted down muffled voices and a lot of things being thrown about and what sounded like bodies hitting blunt objects. He sighed again (he did that quite a lot these days) and started up the stairs.
George F. Carlton’s door was also shut and unlocked, and Lestrade knocked.
The movements inside stopped, and Lestrade waited a good thirty seconds before opening the door. Carlton- a whip-thin streak of a man dressed in an old blazer and jeans- was lying on the ground, covered in sweat and blood and quite a lot of urine, and Lestrade peered out the window against the back wall. Sherlock Holmes dropped down the last rung of the fire escape ladder and vanished into the shadows of the alleyway. Lestrade was sort of an accomplice after the fact now, wasn’t he?
Lestrade turned back to Carlton, who was drooling all over the floor and twitching, and he called it in.
His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen.
Thanks -SH